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Relying On On-Site Search Features, e-Commerce Visitors Spend More Dollars But Less Time Browsing

Posted by, webparsley on November 3, 2004

DoubleClick’s E-Commerce Site Trend Report for Q3 2004 (PDF, 60KB) reveals that “visitors are spending less time on e-commerce sites, but looking at more pages. Consumers are increasing usage of on-site search functions and spending more on purchases driven by on-site searches”.

Some of the key findings of the report follow:

Shoppers are spending less time during each visit, but they are looking at more pages during each visit. This translates to less time per page, and therefore less time for a site to capture a shopper’s attention.

Consumers are relying on the search
functions of commerce sites more, and the conversion rates and order sizes driven by those searches continues to increase, but search-driven purchases are below average site transactions.

A majority of shoppers continues to abandon their shopping carts in a given session before making a purchase, although a sizable number return to buy these items in a later visit.

The biggest bottleneck of online sales is moving shoppers from “carting” items to
beginning the checkout process, a conversion point merchants are gradually improving on.